Kathleen Quinlan started selling Fiore Botanica, her hand-made skin care products, online in 2009. Then based in Montreal, she also wanted to open a traditional store for selling her line. But Quinlan didn’t rent a storefront in Montreal. In late 2012, she instead moved to the South Shore of Nova Scotia.

It could have been a severely limiting move to leave a cosmopolitan city with thousands of potential customers for a rural area heavily reliant on summer tourist traffic. But Quinlan, who grew up in rural Ontario and wanted to return to a small area, insists a rural East Coast base has not restricted her company’s growth.

Fiore Botanica, which produces items such as body butters, lip balms and body lotions in small batches, twice outgrew its original locations in Liverpool, N.S., and is now located in Lunenburg.

The waterfront town, an hour from Halifax and best known as the home of the Bluenose schooner, possesses a base of business and level of entrepreneurship that seems outsized compared to its population: 2,300. High Liner Foods is among several companies of all sizes that call it home.

Quinlan reports that Fiore Botanica is profitable, posting double-digit annual growth, and has two Best Western hotel contracts — with more in negotiation.

In January, products from the company’s men’s line (including shaving oil and aftershave) will be included in gift bags at the Golden Globes. Quinlan and her business partner, Phaedra Charlton-Huskins, recently shipped the products to Los Angeles, where they will be included in the 110 bags given to Golden Globe presenters and award winners. The company’s men’s products will also be featured in a celebrity gift suite.

The pair applied to have the products included, and pay a fee to take part. And the arrangement has led to a second event: Fiore Botanica products will also be featured in gift bags at the 2016 MTV Movie Awards.

What is the pair hoping will come from their company’s Hollywood foray? “Growth,” Quinlan said in an interview at their Lunenburg store. “More international exposure,” added Charlton-Huskins.

They are expecting a boost on social media, and are already experiencing an online U.S. sales bump they believe is linked to the Golden Globes announcement. “We are building a company. It’s not a store,” Quinlan concluded. “We market this like we are in a city.”

In addition to High Liner Foods, a publicly-traded company that started in 1899 and is now North America’s largest seller of frozen value-added seafood, the town is home to Stelia Aerospace North America, which makes composite structures for aircraft makers such as Boeing and Bombardier and now employs nearly 500 people in Lunenburg; and HB Studios, a video game maker that has produced games for distributers such as Konami, MLB.com, Atari, and Nintendo.

Pierre Guevremont and Lynne MacKay were living in Toronto when they decided Lunenburg should be the home of their new craft distillery.

Launched in 2009, The Ironworks Distillery is based in a 120-year-old building that was once home to a marine blacksmith’s shop. The worn and uneven wooden floors add to its charm and have helped make the shop a common stop for tourists. Its rum, apple vodka, and various fruit liqueurs are made using a large wood-fired German still. Guevremont said such a contraption may have fazed residents in a large city. Not in Lunenburg.

Handout/Ironworks Distillery

And a small-town location has not prevented Ironworks from growing. Guevremont reports consistent growth of 25 to 40 per cent a year.

Much of the company’s business depends on the tourist trade. “Lunenburg is the second most visited tourist destination in all of Nova Scotia,” Guevremont said in an interview. “It really is a beacon, known for its restaurants and culinary destinations.

“We knew the fit was going to be a good one and so far it has been.”

Kathleen Quinlan can only identify one disadvantage to doing business from a small place: the cost of shipping. And though she sees Nova Scotia as having “untapped potential” for starting a business, she laments that entrepreneurship is not celebrated in the province.

“It makes me sad,” she said. “We have to be our own cheerleaders in this province, for everything.”

Quinlan would like Fiore Botanica to be similar to Burt’s Bees and Ben & Jerry’s: synonymous with the rural areas of their origins (Maine and Vermont). And although Burt’s Bees eventually moved to North Carolina, she said she has no intention of leaving Lunenburg. In fact, Quinlan is now hunting for a second production site in the town.

“We’ve made a choice to be here,” she said. “It’s really important to show that you can go start a business in these rural areas and be successful.”